Editorial: Pelosi’s mastery of the legislative process on full display

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks during her weekly press conference on December 12, 2019, in Washington, DC. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mastery of the legislative process has rarely been more conspicuous than in the past week. She kept the impeachment process on track while soothing the jitters of the centrists in her caucus by narrowing the articles to a straightforward pair and setting a fittingly somber tone.

Perhaps most impressively, she countered the Republican talking point that Democrats were hell-bent on impeachment at the expense of the people’s business. And she did so with a flourish, announcing a deal with the White House on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact immediately after a news conference unveiling the articles of impeachment against President Trump.

Just to accentuate the point that Democrats could “walk and chew gum” simultaneously, as they like to insist, her House also passed a funding bill to keep the government open and legislation to lower drug prices by empowering Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma.

Oh, and then there was the talking point that Trump’s apologists were poised to deploy: that the Judiciary Committee voted for impeachment in “the dead of night” when few Americans were watching. GOP committee members had been in full diversionary mode all day; the proceedings extended past 11 p.m. Thursday. Then Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., abruptly adjourned the hearing until 10 a.m. Friday.

An infuriated Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., stormed to the hallway microphones, charging that the majority was “more concerned with being on TV in the morning” than finishing its work — and grumbling that he suspected Pelosi’s hand in the scheme.

No doubt he was right.

And outwitted.

Three other Bay Area members of Congress had distinct and significant roles in the process that appears certain to lead to the impeachment of the 45th president next week.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, brought the experience of having worked on two previous impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee — in 1974 as an aide who helped write one of the articles against President Richard Nixon and in 1998 as a member who opposed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Lofgren was a steady, studied presence throughout the hearings and did not hesitate to draw upon her institutional memory.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, demonstrated his prosecutor chops at multiple points. Most memorably, he invoked the famous Watergate quote of Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn. — “What did the president know and when did he know it? — as a preface to a succession of questions to committee counsel that showed that we know the answer in the Ukraine scandal. Trump was aware of the shakedown from start to finish.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, proved a sharp inquisitor on the Intelligence Committee. When a Texas Republican challenged her citation of a Washington Post article that had drawn three Pinocchios from a fact checker, Speier snapped, “The president of the United States has five Pinocchios on a daily basis, so let’s not go there.”

Her rapid retort drew sustained applause.

The Bay Area has had an outsize imprint on the impeachment process, and it starts at the top.

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